


stranger than fiction

by lusterrdust



Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Falling In Love, Love, Mystery, Romance, Strangers to Lovers, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 04:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10959318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusterrdust/pseuds/lusterrdust
Summary: "If he weren’t so perplexed and shaken by what was happening, he may have thought she was pretty. But, if she was a figment his imagination, then of course she’d be pretty. He’d imagined her—no! He wasn’t imagining her." [bughead, au]HIATUS





	stranger than fiction

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd 
> 
> new plot bunny

 

> ▱◯♕
> 
> _“Across galaxies of time and space_  
>  travelling just to see your face  
>  lost amidst the countless stars  
>  to bring me back to where you are.”  
>  _—Bryce W. Anderson_
> 
> ◯

 

It starts with a note.

“Hey, Jug, who’s Betty?”

From his position at the table, Jughead looks over the screen of his laptop to his best friend Archie, leaning lazily against the kitchen counter with a beer in one hand and a powder blue paper in the other. His brows furrow at his friend’s odd question. “What?”

Archie walks over with a smirk and tosses the paper over the keyboard in front of Jughead.

“Betty.” He points to the name, raising a pointed brow and pressing the beer bottle to his lips. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to pry. Just glad you’re finally getting out there.”

Jughead stares in frustrated confusion at the note, his mind whirring in high speed at how it had gotten in his cabin. It’s not his handwriting, nor Archie’s—his friend hardly ever frequents his place when coming down to Oregon.

“This… isn’t mine.” Jughead murmurs, more so to himself.

Archie leaves a while later, picked up by his pregnant and cantankerous wife Veronica, and Jughead’s in his solitude again, only now slightly disturbed.

He scours his property, bringing his sheepdog to tag along while his shotgun rests over his shoulder.

He finds nothing; nothing but trees and earth and hills and streams. Trudging back up the stairs to his cabin, Jughead flicks his cigarette out onto the grass before toeing off his muddy boots and stepping inside. He makes sure to lock his second bolt this night, still unnerved by the strange note from earlier.

_Pick up Caramel’s flea medication and don’t forget the oranges._

_Betty_

… … …

It’s two months later when something else happens—something unexplainable.

Jughead steps out of his shower, rubbing his towel over his hair and face before he opens the medicine cabinet, only to instantly jump back and slam it shut the moment his vision is flooded with pink feminine products.

“What the—“ he opens the mirror again, his breathing irregular as he stares heavily at the bare boned lining of his shelves. Razor, shaving cream, clippers and toothpaste.

No pink frilly boxes.

Jughead rubs a hand over his face before leaning over the sink, staring at the drip of its faulty plumbing as he waits for his heartbeat to regulate again.

The next ten minutes are spent trying to rationalize his hallucination, and he ultimately pins his experience to a result of cabin fever.

His writer’s block is causing damage to his mental state—isolated up in the woods with no distractions or intellectual stimulation. He needs fresh air.

He grabs his gun and pack of smokes before heading out for a hike. 

When Jughead returns later in the evening, no game caught, but head filled with inspiration, it disappears the second he steps into his home.

There’s a woman at his table. A _person_ in his cabin.

Blue eyes snap up toward his as she jumps to her feet in surprise at his appearance before screaming—in shock or fear, he has no idea.

“What the-What are you—!?”

“Get out of my house!” She shrieks in a panic, scrambling for something before she holds up the vase in the center of his table in a defensive stance.

Jughead’s too stunned to notice it’s not a vase that belongs to him.

“This is my house!” he retorts, blinking.

The woman bolts down the hallway into the bathroom, slamming the door with a resounding bang before Jughead’s at her heels, pulling his phone out to call the police.

“Jesus,” he mumbles, heart beating erratically at the prospect of a half-naked delusional woman in his house. He stands awkwardly outside the bathroom door, wondering if he should try and communicate with the girl or wait for help to arrive.

Though his own family’s a bucket a folks with a few loose screws, Jughead’s not exactly keen on trying to converse with a deranged person. Still, he attempts to tell her he won’t press charges and means no harm.

There’s no response.

So, Jughead waits in silence, right up until Sheriff Keller arrives.

Pushing away from the hallway wall, Jughead opens the front door and directs the officer to the bathroom door. “She ran in there. I tried talking to her but…”

When Sheriff Keller gets the door open, Jughead’s words trail off at the empty room. He stands there, gobsmacked as the Sheriff begins to question if he’s been drinking.

“What? No!” Jughead denies, pushing back his shower curtain and checking the tiny cabinets under the sink for good measure. There’s no window, nor any vent big enough for an adult to fit through. The woman is simply… gone.

“I—Sheriff, there—she was here! I didn’t—“ Jughead stutters, lost for words.

“Son,” Sheriff Keller sighs sympathetically, patting his arm. “how often are you comin’ into town? Maybe you should get out of these parts every once in a while. It’s not good to isolate yourself. People can start to hallucinate—“

“I’m not hallucinating!” Jughead growls in frustration, swiping his beanie off to scratch at his head in befuddlement. He _wasn’t_ hallucinating—he couldn’t be.

The woman, she was so…. _so_ …. vivid.

Blonde wavy hair, bright eyes as wide as a doe’s—she’d been in nothing but a white tank and tiny gray bloomers. If he weren’t so perplexed and shaken by what was happening, he may have thought she was pretty. But, if she was a figment his imagination, then of course she’d be pretty. He’d imagined her— _no_! He wasn’t imagining her.

He’d seen her— _heard_ her!

“I…” Jughead shakes his head, brows furrowed with a frown marring his face.

“Get some rest, son.” The Sheriff tells him before taking his leave.

But Jughead doesn’t get rest that night. Instead, he replays the situation a million times in his mind and asks himself if his sanity is slipping. Was moving here to get away from society damaging his mental health? Was his solitude making him looney?

“No.” Jughead scoffs before he pushes himself out of bed to make a grilled cheese sandwich. He’s not crazy. He’s… got a ghost. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

Well, as reasonable as he can imagine. And the idea of a ghost in his house doesn’t exactly put him at ease either.

When he finishes his meal, Jughead pulls a pen from one of the kitchen drawers and uses his teeth to uncap it before he scribbles down an address from his phone and tosses it onto the counter to use in the morning. Maybe he’ll go make an appointment with the local physician. Maybe get something for the stress.

When Jughead awakens the next morning, the paper is gone.

He spends the next half hour looking for it while contemplating the validity of the Sheriff’s off-hand remark and questions his sanity once again.

“I put it there.” He tells Hotdog insistently, pointing to the counter.

The sheepdog doesn’t bat an eyelid at his owner.

“I know I put it there.” Jughead mutters to himself, pulling open the drawers. “I wrote it!”

For the next week, Jughead begins posting notes all over the house. Little post-it stickies with vague reminders and factoids.

It isn’t until a rainy Sunday that he finds what he was (or wasn’t?) looking for.

Pushing himself off the couch, Jughead snaps his laptop shut with a gruff exclamation of frustration. It’s been weeks and his writer’s block hasn’t budged, nor has he found any creative relief. Walking sluggishly to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, Jughead stops at the sight of a pink notepaper hanging off his usually blank fridge.

Walking toward it slowly, he bends forward to read the same handwriting he’d seen months ago. Curvy and neat, nothing like his own chicken-scratch handwriting, it’s exactly the same as what he’d seen on that blue note months prior:

_Don’t forget to pick up potting soil and oranges._

_Betty_

Grabbing the paper off the fridge, Jughead spins around and frantically searches for a pen, pulling his drawers open and shuffling junk around until he finds a sharpie.

Taking a short second to ponder what exactly it is he’s doing, Jughead jots something down.

_Blondie?_

Unable to think up anything else, and already feeling like an absolute lunatic, Jughead grimaces and hangs the paper back up on a cupcake magnet that’s also not his before taking a few steps back and staring at the note as if he’ll see some type of writing appear back at him, like some William Castle’s horror film.

After a few minutes, nothing happens, and Jughead reluctantly resumes his tasks of making coffee.

Hotdog stares at him through his shaggy hair, and with a roll of his eyes, Jughead merely gives the dog a dry look before walking back to his laptop.

Strangely, it’s no longer on the couch where he’d left it. Instead, it’s open and perched on his coffee table. Word document open, the white page has one sentence written across it.

_Who is this?_

 


End file.
